Descripción
I finally captured near perfect video of the secretive and seldom seen deep forest dwelling Tiger Spiketail dragonfly laying eggs in their unique "Pogo Stick" style in my small seep stream flowing from an underground mountain spring that makes for a great birdbath. But sometimes truly rare and unusual observations are made of other creatures. Tiger Spiketails are hardly ever captured in their mountain habitat like these Great Smoky Mountains at almost 4 thousand feet elevation. I've seen and filmed them a few times, but this is the best documentation of their uniqueness. Tiger Spiketail spend most of their lives around tiny, almost invisible spring-fed seepage streams. Their numbers are relatively low and They quickly disappear into the dense foliage when approached and are rarely photographed or filmed in their true wild habitat like these scenes from a trail camera focused on birds. They are big dragonflies up to 3 ½ to 4 inches long and actually trigger the motion detection on the camera when they are this close and we can hear their wings and the sound of the ovipositor striking into the stream bed. Amazing!
The Tiger Spiketail larvae live in these small, food-scarce streams and take several years to mature in these clean, quiet and undisturbed area like these.
Wide yellow bands encircled their abdomen giving them the tiger name. The flight season that stretches from late May into August. These were filmed in late June in classic habitat -
mature woodlands surrounding a shady, perennial,
flowing spring seep without fish leading to small stream with Moss covered rocks, skunk cabbage, spicebush and ferns nearby. This female is pounded her eggs into the wet sand sediment that has collected near the headwaters of the mountain spring and the water is less than an inch deep. This sand however, will never dry out.
This is just another fascinating example of the diversity of plant and animal life proliferating around this pure and healthy tiny mountain spring oasis that stays wet all year at a near constant 55 degrees.
#dragonfly #animallovers #nature